Additional information Recently, the list of Black Sea copepods included some Acartia species new to science (Shmeleva et al., 2008, 2009) (Table 3). It is obvious that some of the names listed in Table 3 differ only slightly in spelling
(no. 5–6 and no. 7–8), and can therefore be regarded as synonymous.
Apparently, species cited in different sources (no. 1–2, no. 3–4 and no. 10–12) should be the same. As a result, the referred list can in fact be reduced to eight “correct original spellings” (Article 32 of the International
Code of Zoological Nomenclature, hereinafter —ICZN) (Anonymous, 1999), namely, A. eremeevi, A. hasanii, A. ioannae, A. janetae A. lamasii, A. mollicula, A. vivesei, and A. zaitsevi. Two of the eight names (A. vivesei
Shmeleva et al., 2008 and A. zaitsevi Shmeleva et al., 2008) have not been confirmed for the purposes of zoological nomenclature due to the complete lack of description. The references to the original descriptions
of these species were, unfortunately, not given by Shmeleva et al. (2008, 2009) and it has not been possible to locate these papers in the body of world literature available. The description of A. lamasii, firstly reported in pre-symposium abstracts (Shmeleva and Selifonova, 2005), is also absent. Therefore, these three names do not satisfy the provisions of Art. 13 of the ICZN and they are not available for the purposes of zoological nomenclature, and thus should be classified as Nomina nuda.
The species A. hasanii Unal et al., 2002, A. ioannae Unal et al., 2002, A. janetae Unal et al., 2002, A. eremeevi Pavlova and Shmeleva, 2010, and A. mollicula Pavlova and Shmeleva, 2010 were reported in the articles (Pavlova and Shmeleva, 2010; Unal et al., 2002) corresponding to the publication criteria for the purposes of zoological nomenclature.
However, the descriptions and drawings depicted in these articles were made without paying attention to details; the text in the species descriptions and their corresponding images include a number of contradictions, which rules out a positive identification. Differential diagnoses for A. eremeevi and A.mollicula are absent. In addition, fifth legs
of A. eremeevi, A.mollicula (Pavlova and Shmeleva, 2010: Figs. 2-8; 5-5),
A. hasanii, A. ioannae and A. janetae (Unal et al., 2002: Figs. 1F, 2D, 3E)
correspond to fifth legs of immature specimens of Acartiidae. For this reason,
the independent categorization of these five species is questionable.
As a consequence, it is not currently possible to add new species of the genus Acartia to the list of the Black Sea species. [details]